“NSFW: Sex, Humor, and Risk in Social Media is a more than book. It opens up NSFW as more than a homogenous category of offensive content, and highlights that our concerns should be with much more than safety for work. NSFW reveals how sexuality continues to be entangled with governance—in this case on, of, and by social media platforms.”
Katrin Tiidenberg, Associate Professor of Visual Culture and Social Media, Tallinn University, Estonia; author of Selfies: Why We Love (and Hate) Them
“Through a range of methods spanning the humanities, social sciences, and data science, Paasonen, Jarrett, and Light offer a sophisticated close reading of contemporary digital media cultures. Ranging from the attention economies of dating apps and social media platforms, to platform-based gig economies, to regulatory economies of digitally mediated workplaces, NSFW considers both the politics of commercial sexwork and everyday practices of sexual expression, asking whose bodies and feelings are defined unsafe and whose work is legitimated by platform governance and regulation practices.”
Kath Albury, Professor of Media and Communication at Swinburne University of Technology
“In NSFW, Paasonen, Jarrett, and Light draw on qualitative and quantitative methods to develop a critically engaged and multi-scalar discussion of an integral hashtag, cleaving a critical space in which they expose the ambiguous pleasures and politics nested within the term. A must-read for anyone interested in popular culture and social media.”
Sharif Mowlabocus, Senior Lecturer in Media Studies, University of Sussex
An honest look at a complex subject with the recommendation to look beyond content and instead focus on context and consent.
The Advocate
2020, Nancy Baym Annual Book Award
